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Burgers, fries, pizza to vanish from Virginia schools? I think this would be a good thing. We had little threads of this discussion the smoking ban post, but I think this one earns its own debate.
While trans fats are notoriously bad for you, is this the real problem? Isn’t the root of nutrition problem a lot deeper than just trans fat? Just saying, this is a bandaid and a political move more than anything.
Some interesting comments happened earlier:
Andy:
I also believe child endangerment laws should be passed for parents that feed their kids fast food all the time making them enormous at ten years old. To me, it’s the same as starving or beating your kids.
PLEASE take the two minutes it will take to read William Saletan on the war on obesity from almost two years ago in Slate:
http://www.slate.com/id/2139941/ Then, rejoin. “Junk-Food Jihad: Should we regulate French fries like cigarettes?â€
School lunches: disgusting. All that bad food week in week out and the kids’ only “choice†is between pizza, burgers and salisbury steak. Institutional food can be healthy, and there are school districts that have implemented healthy food choices.
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Tagged as: Charlottesville, Politicians, Politics, Questions
I think it’s silly. For one thing, lots of foods that are free of trans fats are still bad for you. Have you noticed that crisco is now free of trans fats? How do we know that what is done to the crisco to make it free of trans fats isn’t just as unhealthy as the trans fats themselves?
My kids attend Charlottesville city public schools and the lunches are awful. So awful, I forbid my kids to eat them. They need to do a lot more than ban one type of fat.
at my school growing up we had relatively healthy meals most days, but then we had “fry friday” which also was “pizza friday.” seemed to work just fine to keep the bad-for-you foods restricted to one day a week…
Is serving the kids foods they do not like the answer? Would this increase the number of twinkies that appeared in lunch boxes?
IMHO, particular attention should be placed on the ever shinking time allotted for P.E. in the K-6 grade levels. Establishing physical activity as a part of a daily routine will go much further than extending the nanny state into our school cafe
I agree with Lurker30. I have heard of schools outright eliminating recess. No time for freeze tag when the kids have to take life altering exams that failing can spell doom for a teacher.
The good old nanny state.
The problem with outright bans on trans fats is that there are some trans fats that occur naturally. An article in the NY Times not too long ago pointed out that many bakeries were forced to switch from real butter to shortening (a trans-fat-free version) or margarine in their baked goods, because butter has a naturally occurring amount of trans fats.
Personally, I think that’s ridiculous… it adheres to the letter of the law, but certainly not the intent. I’d rather eat a half teaspoon of real butter (ingredients: cream) than a tablespoon of margarine (ingredients: Liquid Soybean Oil, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Water, Buttermilk, Contains Less Than 2% Of Salt, Soy Lecithin, Sodium Benzoate, Vegetable Mono And Diglycerides, Artificial Flavor, Vitamin A Palmitate, Beta Carotene).
Partially Hydrogenated Oil is the Devil!!!
i think it is a good idea.
to address a couple of the points made above, just because foods the have eliminated trans fats are still bad for you, that doesn’t mean they aren’t at least better than before. trans fats raise bad cholesterol and lower good cholesterol. removing them is an improvement.
nanny state? it’s funny how terms like that get thrown around like they are a bad thing. maybe it is an example of a shift towards that, but think of it as the nanny who gives better food to the many thousands of kids whose parents can’t afford to pack them lunch and are thus on public school free lunch programs. i think i am ok with that.
“Bad Cholesterol/Good Cholesterol” is a concept invented by the drug companies.
ok, well the american heart association uses it as well, so i’m not overly concerned about who coined the term. not EVERYTHING is a conspiracy.
if you have some research you’ve done that disproves results done by other scientists, i’m sure they’d appreciate you passing it on.
and can i edit “disproves” to “refutes” before i get lambasted for thinking that every scientific study is proof?
ms. k, i totally agree. the anti-trans fat craze is out of hand, and it would be so much easier if people just took 10 seconds to read an ingredients label and see what they were really getting! but instead, people just look at the front of a food product’s packaging, where producers and marketers know exactly what to write in an eye-catching graphic on the front of the box. remember when atkins was big, and nearly everything imaginable was labeled in giant letters as low carb (my personal favorite grocery store sighting was low-carb microwavable bacon…oh-so-healthy…)?
so why can’t we just focus on making school lunches healthier, even if through legislative means, without buying into the health-food-craze-of-the-week? why not just require some extra vegetables and call it a day?
Again, everyone here needs to read In Defense of Food. It’s the scientificiation (word?) of eating that has caused so many of these problems to begin with. Jamie Oliver, the kinda cheesey British chef (aka the naked chef) has actually done really cool things in England to improve school lunches, some of which involves teaching kids about gardening and cooking.
Of course, you learn how to eat from your parents, and if everything you have comes out of a take out bag or goes into the microwave, a transfat free school isn’t going to help.
Also, the labeling issue falls apart for school lunches in the same way it does at restaurants - you have no idea what’s in the food you order out.
PS: Peanut butter is one of the worst trans fat offenders, as nobody seems willing to stir the stuff when it naturally separates.
Oy Lys… Jamie is a dude. … seriously he is a brilliant chap. Why is he cheesey to you?( not even sure I know what you mean by that)
I think Jamie Oliver is a bit cheesy, as well. I think it has something to do with him having one setting: full-on, pedal-to-the-metal, go! Admittedly, he’s quite likable. I also respect what he’s done in the UK, with regard to school lunches. But he can be a little too much the cute puppy, jumping for attention, at times. But then, I’m already on record as a total slut for Tony Bourdain. I likes my chefs with some rock and roll cool, to them.
I’m a natural PB geek, so I can’t stand the processed kind, but it’s not that bad, it has less than .5 grams per serving (which counts as none, according to the FDA). Processed snack foods (crackers, cookies, etc) are the worst, or they used to be before all the snack food processors changed their formulas (formulae?).
the magic rat: Yeah yeah, i am just stirring up things a bit, I find it comical that saturated fat it the “flavor of the day” (pun intended), We are constantly fed (pun intended) new information and often times quite extreme information about the things that we are consuming, it become very intertaining that way. In Northern Europe it has been proven that popular demand can and will change the way the major food producers produce their food products. For instance you would be hard pressed to find a non organic milk in the dairy isle in a grocery store in Denmark, and that is not due to the fact that non-organic milk was outlawed. We can change the products that are fed to our kids by voting with our wallets. Buy and teach your kids to eat fresh foods, and non processed foods, teach them to proud of a healthy diet, to the extend you can afford it, and slowly we will begin seeing better assortments in schools and in the grocey store.
Put the kids in the field and make them dig their own stinkin’ potatoes.
http://www.farmtoschool.org/
http://www.foodsecurity.org/procurement.html
TwoOFour i see what you are saying, but i think the people who are possibly the most affected by and powerless to choose against terrible school lunches–poor children— aren’t going to have their parents mixing up a fresh salad for lunch and only buying free range chicken for dinner.
i know when i have kids it won’t matter to them what is being served at school, because they’ll be provided much better options. but i think it does matter to a lot of people.
i know trans fat is the buzz word of the year, but the stuff is bad for you. is banning it a solution? no, but it is at least a small step in the right direction.
I think capping levels of certain proven unhealthy ingredients in food served to minors may be a good option too. As a way to further healthy eating habits. i do understand the enormeous problem we have in the states, with the families that cannot feed their kids super healthy meals. But the habits we form at home is indeed still the root of the problem, and despite growing up dirt poor, my morther still managed to teach me good eating habits and feed me healthy food. Another problem is that it takes a whole lot longer to cook healthy food. She may have had more time on her hands than your average working mom (or dad).
But reforming the gross over usage of food colorings, fat chemicals etc etc, we have to all play a role, you can’t regulate bad foods away, they will just invent discusting alternative fillers. And then we are no better off.
ban all food in schools and replace with ciggarettes and sugar free red bull.
TwoOFour, I have no idea how old you are, but I’m not that old and I know that with healthcare and housing costs going up so much over the years, there is less money to spend on food.
that is one of the reasons many people think the formula used to determine the poverty line is out of whack, since it puts food costs as a much higher percentage of total costs than it probably is. but anyway, that is a topic for another day.
my point is just that it is getting harder to afford food, healthy or otherwise.
erh the healthy eatinghabits fell to the wayside a few seconds ago when i spotted the girlscout cookies
TMR: I concur!…I do not long for the years i lived off apple juice, canned tomatoes and pasta. I am not disclosing my age. But the cans were tin, not goat skin.
Whuh? Is it Girl Scout cookie season already? Oh, MAN. My diet is soooo dead if I see any of those chocolate-covered peanut butter ones.
Thatgrrl:You know where you sawe those cookies…..locks her fridge with an industrial grade hanging lock
It’s a good point that we have to consider that kids who are getting the free lunch have no choice in the matter, and it’s unlikely that their parents are serving healthy food at home. Still, what I’d love to see are school lunches that serve fresh, seasonal local fruits and vegetables, meats that aren’t processed, and a limited amount of refined carbohydrates.
Must not think about Girl Scout cookies. Must not think about Girl Scout cookies.
Um, anyone know an industrial grade lock picker?
It’s getting much harder to afford healthy food and our schools haven’t made a profound effort in that direction for decades (ketchup as vegetable, anyone?). The most amazing thing these days is that the cafeteria workers don’t actually cook anything: they simply heat it up or compose it. Back, back in my day, the cafeteria ‘ladies’ cooked us sauerkraut & franks one day and potato pancakes the next (it was Pennsylvania and such are the germanic imperatives). The school smelled of lunch all morning long. Realistically, however, the more we ask the cafeteria workers to do, the more expensive producing lunch is. Abolishing all transfat is silly as it would abolish butter which hurts my head and heart in equal measure. Anybody look at the sodium content of school lunches recently? Anybody look at the whole grain quotient in school lunches recently? More fresh foods rather than prepared, but that increases the cost. Majorly reduce hydrogenated oils everywhere. Can you pronounce the ingredients? Great: feed that to the children! (This includes Daisy brand sour cream {ingedient: cream} and Breyer’s ice cream — huzzah!) It’s simpler than this one dictate and more expensive. My children pack about 9 days out of 10. We’re lucky and I’ve been reading ingredients for decades.
No one read my link, but then again, I didn’t read the article. Here is the link:
http://www.farmtoschool.org/state-programs.php?action=detail&id=55&pid=124
please send thin mints right away.
I disagree that it is getting much more difficult to afford healthy food. Junk food and pre-made meals are a lot more expensive than the raw ingredients for a healthy meal. I can eat healthily for a month on probably only $100.
What peeps don’t understand is that maybe a bunch of processed or frozen low-quality foodstuff seems cheap but the health problems you’ll have later on in life will cost you mucho $$$$.
ethan, WTF? I agree with you again!
Shenanigans, a lot of poor people don’t give a shit about health problems because they inevitably do not have to pay for their expenses. That is passed onto hospitals, which in turn increase their prices, passing on the cost to insurance companies, which in turn passes on the cost to paying customers of health insurance.
ethan - So what you’re saying is poor people don’t mind getting sick b/c they don’t have to pay for the health care costs. “Hey You can amputate my diabetic limbs all you want, just so long as I don’t have to pay for it. Woohoo!” By that logic, the more we subsidize health care in this country the more sick we’ll be. Sound thinking, ethan
Ethan: I know. It’s fucked up. Those of us who choose to eat healthy are now helping pay for those who consumed too much fast food growing up.
He’s not saying poor people want to get sick. He’s pointing out the fact that they can’t pay and ultimately won’t have to pay for their health care. Thanks to our fucked up healthcare system. Thanks to the shitty cheap food available. It’s a vicious circle. Go read Fast Food Nation or Omnivore’s Dilemma already. Or watch SuperSize Me. Or read The China Study.
@34, 36, 37, 38, 39, et al.: i imagine that if you’re poor enough that you have to spend time wondering where your family’s next meal will come from, then no, you won’t give much of a fuck about the eventual health care bills.
what’s $10,000 when you can’t find 20?
What’s steak when you can go out in the yard and get groundhog?
it’s still steak.
But then I’ll be standing next to an obese person if the government schools don’t stop force feeding pizza and fries into our children. You know how they are. I’ll throw up in my mouth a little. Hence, I’m being made sick by the so-called individual next to me. I need the elected officials to protect me from this travesty. A fat tax. You vote..you have to get weighed first. You want to go into a restaurant..not so fast lard ass.
I saw something recently that said there were literally no studies prior to WW2 about obesity in America. It was probably some inane article in The Hook because that’s about the extent of my brain function at the moment, but I do not remember obese back in my day…that would be the early 1930’s and no one I knew was fat so to speak. Now every Discovery channel story is about Ed from Tuscon and the crane that needs to take him out of his house., plus the obligatory kind firefighters. And somehow it’s supposed to be normalized w/ the 4 million calories per day. There was too much peer pressure..cough..and I know this will be shocking..shocking. We had snack machines in the school hallways and we also had games where everyone didn’t win and there was always some loser who was picked last (me) and somehow we persevered and actually became successful because of this adversity and also we didn’t live w/ Mom forever. Hey…fat ass put down the Doritos. You look like shit. Not so tough. But we are a sensitive society. That’s why our dollar is so strong today.
ummmmygahd, what?
Shen: That is exactly what ethan said, “a lot of poor people don’t give a shit about health problems because they inevitably do not have to pay for their expenses”
Ethan: regarding your comment earlier about healthy food being less expensive than fast food. A) Were you feeding yourself or a family of 4, B) Where did you buy this food? (I’m curious to know where you shop), C) Was ALL the food you bought ‘healthy’ or organic or just a portion of it? I am single and shop for myself and I can tell you I spend more than $100 a month on food. I could probably subsist on pasta and meat for a month on $100 but that isn’t really healthy either. You have to count eating out at restaurants as well - even if you’re eating healthy there too. If you buy $100 worth of healthy groceries and only eat at home one night a week that doesn’t count. I’d challenge any family of 4 to afford ANY food on just a budget of $100 a month. In fact, I’d even wager to keep my receipts from a month of eating in every night with healthy (and reasonable - nothing fancy) meals and see what it comes to. I’ll only shop at Whole Foods or the produce/organic section of Giant. If Cvillain sponsors it I will do it and make my report
It is a vicious cycle. I also work in healthcare and I think it’s pretty cynical (and a little mean) to criticize people with health problems who cannot afford to pay. I really hope that you are always able to afford your medical bills and are somewhere with a public hospital like UVa who will treat you regardless of your financial status or health issues. Now getting into a Michael Moore argument here may be more than this post could handle (and I havent seen Sicko yet). We are lucky to have a hospital like UVa that will treat anyone regardless of insurance. I havent dont a price comparison with Martha Jeff (which is private) but I doubt MJ is much cheaper. It’s easy to sit high and mighty when you’re not sick and you have health insurance. I hope we all stay that way, we should be so lucky.
BTW an old neighbor of mine gave me a great recipe for groundhog should anyone want it. Parlie? He swears by it. I have not tried it. It does not sound good, but what could really be THAT bad glazed in a mixture of apricot jelly and Heinz57?
ooo ooo ooo…
don’t forget squirrel melts!
http://cvillain.com/?p=389
“Healthy” does not have to equal “organic” or high-priced. There are plenty of healthy, non-processed foods that are not expensive. And ounce for ounce, it IS cheaper to make healthy foods than to buy processed foods… I guarantee you I could make a hamburger that was no more expensive than the $0.99 one from McDonalds, so long as I made certain it was the same size/weight/etc. And a 10-lb bag of rice and a few lbs of dried beans go a LONG way, are healthy, and wouldn’t cost more than a few dollars.
The problem is that you cannot go to the grocery store and buy two ounces of hamburger meat, a single bun, and two teaspoons of ketchup. You have to “invest” in a pound of hamburger (let’s say $4), an 8-pack of buns ($1), and a bottle of ketchup ($3) in order to make one hamburger. That’s the raw materials for 8+ McD’s-sized hamburgers (you’d have plenty of ketchup left over, which would reduce the unit price on future burgers), for about a dollar each.
But folks have to have $8 to do that, and some folks can only scrape together a dollar at a time (this is perhaps a too-narrow example, but it illustrates the concept).
The other problem is that very few people want to subsist solely on a diet of potatoes, beans and rice, and it’s not realistic to expect folks who don’t have much money to do so. After a couple days of beans, rice, and ramen noodles, the dollar menu at Taco Bell is like the damn Holy Grail (sadly, personal experience with that dilemma is closer to my recent past than I’d prefer).
All you Michael Pollan fans, don’t miss his Q&A in the New York Times today:
“I don’t feel like it’s our job to tell people what to eat. I think our job is to help people think about it.”
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/an-omnivore-defends-real-food/
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